iPhone beginners: A quick two-steps to free up space

The other day, I was at a hockey game with a friend when her phone ran out of space. She tapped:

Settings > General > Storage & iCloud Usage > Manage Storage

Note that this refers to the first Manage Storage, under STORAGE, as opposed to the second one, under ICLOUD.

Her available storage was 0. No room for even one picture. Here’s how she solved the problem.

  • Step One: Open Photos and tap the Albums tab (lower right corner).

Take a quick look at your albums. Do you have any videos? Typically, those are the biggest storage hogs. Are there any you can delete? Obviously, you don’t want to delete a video you care about, but I always manage to find a few retakes or false starts, or one or two that were just unintentional.

Find a few videos, tap each one and hit the trash can (lower right corner) to delete.

If you don’t have any videos to delete, start making your way through your photos. Delete what you can. If you delete 20 photos, you should have enough room to get you through the moment.

  • Step Two: Go back to Albums and tap the one called Recently Deleted.

When you deleted your videos and pictures, they were actually not deleted, they were moved to this album. Your free space won’t appear until you delete them permanently. In the Recently Deleted album, double-check to make sure you haven’t deleted something you really care about. Once you are sure, tap Select (upper-right corner), then Delete All (lower-left corner).

That’s it. Your free space is yours to do with as you please. When you get the chance, spend some time on the above-mentioned Manage Storage page and see what you can do about freeing up even more storage. Perhaps delete some apps that you never use?

If you are a regular Loop reader, this might be old hat to you. But consider passing the link along to folks you know who might find this useful.